Free Agency In Baseball

And while Blade didn’t author most of it and I never read the article, it speaks to the backward-ass way that most teams operate…..

A player doesn’t get to free agency until he plays in 6 full seasons at the major league level. Six years is a long time, at any level of any professional sport. Athlete’s bodies break, sometimes quickly but without question they fail over time. Baseball GM’s do a good job of managing these players and getting the most production possible out of them during their indentured time. But they don’t start paying them big bucks until the peak of their career has ended. How stupid is that? The ultimate goal of all professional teams should be to stock pile players that produce more value on the field than what they get paid. If you look at WAR, player value is 5 mil per win. But with free agents it’s 9 million per win. Is there a simpler numerical disparity that highlights the stupidity of signing free agents in baseball?

With the sweet cable deals that are fueling revenue for ALL mlb teams right now it’s difficult to guess where baseball goes with free agency in the future. There is a ton of dough out there and it’s getting spent on players who are on the Coke Bottle slide of their career. No one know what owners are making off each of their players. Wins are one thing, merchandise and TV deals are another. Fans look at a deal and just assess the total dollars paid out and the years of the deal. I think that might be the best example of how clueless we fans are to the financial side of how professional sports are operated………

If I were an owner, I would operate my team by not giving a single sh!t about the back of a player’s baseball card. Why pay him tens of millions of dollars for what he did for your competitor? Still, the owners all look fat and happy. They probably sit around laughing at us……

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Stupidity always rests with people who buy the seats, parking, food, clothing and products featured in broadcasts. I was one of those people. I wanted to be entertained and still do. So I pay. Stupid …..YES!

This is nothing new, the shallow and hollow stupid lament of all involved. Going back to the first days of free agency people complained of huge contracts. People? Other owners, fans, media. It was most ridiculous when the owners were crying poverty during the strained negotiations that led to strikes. There always seems to be one owner, one captain of industry, more stupid than the next. But we are all collaborators, as Nipper attests. Baseball owners have always seemed to be a breed apart. As capitalists go they are not typically very smart. In olden years, buying a baseball team was typically an awful way to make money, ast least in the short term. True, I would wager that EVERY team sells exponentially more than it was bought for in the long run. But owning a baseball team is more about vanity, isn’t it? Sort of: I’m a bigger plantation owner than you other bitches. All right, the plantation bit doesn’t play now that players rival owners in riches.

It’s all kind of dispiriting, not that I am saying we should go back to the Curt Flood days.

Off topic, but apt for the holiday, I just received this in an email from my alma mater, Le Moyne College. I am taking the liberty of sharing it because, well, I thought it was worth sharing.

Grace Before Meals

As we begin this meal with grace,
Let us become aware of the memory
Carried inside the food before us:
The quiver of the seed
Awakening in the earth,
Unfolding in a trust of roots
And slender stems of growth,
On its voyage toward harvest,
The kiss of rain and surge of sun;
The innocence of animal soul
That never spoke a word,
Nourished by the earth
To become today our food;
The work of all the strangers
Whose hands prepared it,
The privilege of wealth and health
That enables us to feast and celebrate.

Grace After Meals

We end this meal with grace
For the joy and nourishment of food,
The slowed time away from the world
To come into presence with each other
And sense the subtle lives behind our faces,
The different colors of our voices,
The edges of hungers we keep private,
The circle of love that unites us.
We pray the wise spirit who keeps us
To change the structures that makes others hunger
And that after such grace we might now go forth
And impart dignity where we partake.

Ever wait standing for three hours for a Thanksgiving meal? Yeah I’ve done it. Many times but lucky the weather is much nicer in the South BAY. I get religious this time of year when the churches open their doors and the food is given out freely.

Heavy shit, Nippy. Happy Thanksgiving, one and all. I’m thankful my family is all healthy and happy and we’re together this week.

The owners? They are mainly big babies. I remember at the time that Eddie Debartolo Sr. bought the 49ers and then had to give it to his son Eddie Jr. because he already owned the Pittsburgh Penguins was the height of rich-boy entitlement. As in “here you go, son. I can’t play with the shiny new football team I just bought. You play with it.” That Eddie D turned out to be a great owner, and soon possibly a Hall-of-Fame owner is beside the point. The way we buy our kids clothes they are buying football teams and multi-million dollar businesses. And the fact that they have to be protected from their own stupidity (salary caps and the like) is also the height of dick-swinging playground bullshit.

Great one liner at SJ Mercnews , where a blogger makes a comment about doofus mayor Reed and his ballot initiative to reduce pensions:
“Just proves that City Hall is a lot like Home Depot…you can never find someone to help you and they are both full of tools.”

Yes Happy Thanksgiving to “All the Flapper Knuckleheads ”
Heading up to Reno for Thanksgiving tommorow at the crack of dawn.Big feast with the family and relatives, lots of food,lots of wine,lots of alcohol &Beer and this just driving up there.(just kiddin
Been fighting this gnarly flu congestion crap for a week.Atleast the roads will be good.Enjoy your (wahalote) Turkey in Spanish I believe.